My experience as an English teacher in Daegu, South Korea

Bboys and Boy Bands

I went to the R-16 international bboy competition in at Olympic Park in Seoul this past Sunday. Definitely worth staying late in Seoul. Being from Socal around the hip hop scene back home, I felt a little pang of homesickness. I have to admit, before I came to Korea I thought I’d see bboys all over the place haha.

bboy competition in Seoul

Saturday was the individual competition but I couldn’t go to that since I was at the Usher concert haha. Sunday was the crew show and battle. There were 8 crews from Korea, Vietnam, China, Philippines, Germany, France, Spain, and Puerto Rico. I’m not a judge or anything, but they could’ve been cleaner. Overall, pretty good competition and variety of styles.

I was happy to see a crew from the Philippines! Project P-Noise (ha clever!) from Manila. A lot of bboys back home are Pil-Ams so it’s nice to see some bboys from the motherland competing internationally. I read on their bio that they’re the first crew from the Philippines to compete on an international level. Not the first bboys to do it, but the first bboy crew.

Their routine was really creative and told a story. There were 3 nerdy guys trying to learn how to dance so they looked on the internet and downloaded some moves. Kudos for the geek factor. They wore some nice Philippine flag hoodies and tees, too. Way to represent! Here are a couple videos:

They beat Puerto Rico in the battle by just a few points. Anyone else find that interesting? Philippines v Puerto Rico?

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In the next round, they were up against Jinjo Crew from Korea. Seeing them live just confirms that Korean bboys are damn good. Jinjo Crew won the competition at the end of the night. Would’ve been cool to see Gamblerz too :P. Here’s Jinjo Crew’s routine. I wonder where they kept those hats…

During the competition, one of my friends pointed out that a bunch of girls were taking pictures of someone behind the stage. I had no clue why. She said it was someone from a boy band. So I asked her who and which one? She said it was Jaebeom! I recognized his name from the 2PM controversy since he suddenly and mysteriously left the band earlier this year. I didn’t know what he looked like so I had to trust all the girls there that it was really him.

So I decided to check online to confirm and yeah it was Jaebeom! I’ve only been in Korea for 5 months and I’ve already seen a (well, former) boy band member!